European Commission to boost fight against disinformation

On 13 November, EU Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini called on member states to support her proposal for the EU finance ministers to increase resources for national strategic communication teams to counter disinformation. Meanwhile, EU Digital Commissioner Mariya Gabriel announced plans to set up an expert body of academics and civil society members to fight fake news. The announcements come after several governments and dozens of security experts called on Brussels to do more with Russian propaganda.

Ministers from Croatia, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, and the UK backed calls for more money to boost the underfunded small StratComm team of the European External Action Service. Russian propaganda has recently targeted European elections, including in Germany, the Czech Republic, France or recently Spain’s Catalonia. Moscow customises its disinformation to specific countries and usually tries to undermine political establishments, the EU and exploit anti-system sentiments in targeted countries. According to Gabriel, Internet trolls are able to purchase 20,000 comments for €5,000 or 300,000 social media followers for €2,600.